Harvest Monday

Kiwi helped my in the garden tonight. We took off the walls of water and placed them under the drip line for quick access if needed.

And he kept me going.  Not a great photo of me but the scenery and Kiwi are great.  We spent Memorial Day hiking up to White Pine Lake in 6 inches of new snow with both kids in tow.  No makeup, man t-shirt on, ponytail, and then covered in dirt from working in the yard.  Well, you understand.  I feel it's okay to be very real when I blog about my garden. And this was just what I looked like tonight - I didn't even retouch the photo or enhance the colors.

We finally got the mix for the square foot garden.  It's call the Garden Box Mix from Millers in Hyrum. Buy it in bulk not the bags. On Saturday's in the spring it's on sale for $80 a yard otherwise it's about $105 which is still a bargain because you don't have to mix anything - it's already done for you.  The pH is checked and all the nutrients and micronutrients. This was half full and it took a yard to fill it the rest of the way.  It is 4 feet by 16 feet by 10 inches.  

It has coconut husk instead of peat moss (Utah peat moss is full of salt because of old Lake Bonneville). And it has pearlite to increase the water holding capacity since we live in the desert instead of vermiculite which helps with drainage. It rained yesterday which brought the perlite to the top and I smoothed out part of it today which is the darker part.

You can see my other square foot garden here:

I love the rock around it and plan to add it to all of my flower beds. It's $59 a yard and so that is probably going to be a fall thing and only part of the flower beds at that. Slowly but surely things are taking shape. Need to edge again. 

My Summertime lettuce which is a head lettuce is taking shape.  I can't wait to try it.  And my romaine lettuce is starting to look good too.  

And my spinach is starting to grow.  I need to harvest some of it soon. Maybe I'll put some on my homemade gluten free pizza with alfredo sauce, chicken,  and chopped tomatoes.

See that weed at the very bottom of the photo below.  It's called Morning Glory by most people in Utah except this is really Bind Weed.  Terrible stuff and it will kill anything it gets its tendrils on. It's gone now, sort of, stinkin' rhizomes. 

My Big Daddy onions are doing well, and those in the back are from last year and are going to seed - which is what I want. It is pretty and it will give me plenty of seeds to share.

This is my hard neck and soft neck garlic row.  

I planted a row of Jade Bush green beans.  Hands down my favorite green bean ever.  I will be planting some in the big square foot garden along with yellow wax beans.

My tomato plants are starting to get a little bigger.  I have 2 Cherokee Purple, a few pink brandywine and red beefsteak, and 6 early girls, oh and not pictured are the 3 romas next to the house -they do much better on the hot side of the house. I need 4 more cages - still ...

And my snow peas.  I can hardly wait.

Another view of the Early Girls.  I did buy the plants. I just had a terrible time trying to grow them from seed this year.  I am going to throw out the seeds and start over with something new next year. I put collars on a few.  They help keep out the tomato horn worms.  I just cut two toilet paper rolls and put them around the base of the plant and put a little dirt around them.

You can see here that last year I planting the garlic and the onions before I knew where the NEW drip line would go.  These are the only two rows that are off.  I am going to have to move the onions next to the line - just the small ones.

My Spirit Bush pumpkins have all sprouted.  

Here is a view of the garden from the back south east corner of our 1/2 acre lot.

As you can see we are surrounded by alfalfa.

And here is our lonely little trex deck that is not shoveled in the winter and in the dead of summer it is just too hot to step on.  One day it will have a pergola that will be beautiful and shade the south side of my house.  In the meantime I am pinning every cool pergola on Pinterest that I can possibly find. It's under my Landscape Architecture board if you want to see what I've pinned so far.

And let me tell you I love Natural Guard.  Anderson's Seed and Garden recommended it because this upper tier was so dry all of the time and looked awful.  One treatment along with a serious dose of fertilizer made all the difference. 

See, gorgeous green - oh and that lonely ash tree will get some friends eventually.  We need to put in about 6 more trees along the upper side of the rocks. Which will also help shade the south side of the house.

Can you see why we finally got trees on the west side of our house? Shade.  And that got the ball rolling for us.  Thankfully.  The bushes you see here are Honey Suckle compact bush and Dwarf Burning Bush which will turn bright red in the fall. They are growing quickly and it's already helping a little. The trees on the west side of the yard are Improved Canadian Choke Cherry and the branches are already starting to grow after 1 year. 

So thankful.  Do you see that massive air conditioner? 4200 square feet of house is expensive to cool.  Although I must say that it's a good thing that 2600 of it is in the basement. 

I remember my landscape architect teacher telling me that one well placed tree can take reduce the need for air conditioning by 1 hour a day. So I hope that 3 well placed trees will make a big dent in the air conditioning bill in a few years when they get big enough.

It's cold out there

We've had frost on the ground a few mornings lately.  It's about time.  Seriously.  It's November.  

And I finally got my garlic in the ground the end of October. 

I purchased these two bulbs.  The rest are from last year.  Hard neck garlic from somewhere in Eastern Europe but forgive me for not paying attention to the name.  I love the garden store in the fall with its piles of garlic originating from all over the world.   And I love hard neck garlic.  Bigger cloves.  Less work.  Stronger flavor.  

Placed them in the trench.

Covered it all up.

 Moved the trellis and covered the garlic with the 3 little panels I had left over.

And here is the square foot garden from my parents.  I got it spray painted.  I just didn't get more soil.  So much for getting things going and getting that cold frame in place.  I really think I need to add in the rebar but I am not sure how to cut it.  We get a lot of wind. 

 I do have a good excuse as I've not been feeling well.  I usually work through it but this stopped me cold in my tracks.  I'm feeling better now but where am I going to find the mix for my garden this time of year?

Getting the garlic ready

I got out my tray of garlic the other day and starting going through them to pick out the cloves to plant this October.  I probably only pulled apart 1/3 of my bulbs.  I saved the smaller cloves for cooking and kept most of the larger cloves for planting.  Last year I think I had to break apart 90% of my bulbs. Last year I planted 80 and this year I have 100.  I could always do more but I think that will be more sufficient for my little family.  Besides I need enough left over for spicing up my food this winter.

I guess these are called bulbils (below).  If you want your hard neck garlic bulbs to get bigger you can snip these off when they are little.  Or if you want to try growing garlic from bulbils (I guess it takes a few years this way) then you can let them grow. You have to let them get to the point where they are just bursting out.  My bulbs were just fine and now I have both.  We'll see what happens.  

Of course I found out that the deer have rubbed their stupid antlers on my new trees.  I really hope all the bow hunters driving around these parts on their four wheelers get those four big six points very soon.  

Garlic Harvest

This is what I got from one row of 15 feet.  At two to three inches apart I should have harvested 60 bulbs.  I harvested 75 with only a handful of little ones.  This is my best garlic harvest in the 3 years that I've been growing garlic.  The nice thing is buying it once and then using cloves from what you grow to replant.  This makes it the most affordable plant in my garden.  No need for starting indoors, etc.  And nothing likes to eat it.  Just be careful to not over water because I've heard they can get some kind of rot and split.

Chicken and snow peas

Lets start with the smallest head of cabbage from my garden EVER.  But it was tasty, I can say that. I will grow the Columbia River cabbage again except I will put it back between the rows of corn for better shade.

 And some of the green onions I've grown too.  I love the green bunching onions.

 Purple Kohlrabi, regular green kohlrabi, and a bit of garlic (it wasn't quite ready and I hadn't cured it so it wasn't very strong). I like the garlic tops to fall over and after you pull them up you let them dry in the hot sun for 2 weeks and this is what it takes to get great flavor. Learned about that from this show although the garlic feature is no longer there.

The last of the snow peas.  They were like candy.

 Here is the cabbage all chopped up and in the pan.

And here it is beginning to cook with a little olive oil.

And here are the snow peas with the sliced water chestnuts. The nice thing about snow peas is that by the time you get sick of them, they stop growing for the season.  I'll let you know how the fall crop goes.  I haven't wanted to grow one before but having my own Honda Mini-tiller really helps! Today I added 2 more rows of green beans and 1/2 row of lettuce.

I pulverized the chicken then cut it into small pieces. Very tender that way and super fast to cook. Here is the link to the recipe I sorta used. Moo Goo Gai Pan

How does your Garlic grow?

Garlic - it's super easy to grow and if you haven't tried it and want to, you should. And deer hate it.  They stay out of my garden they hate it so much.

This year (or rather last fall when I planted it) my garlic is in a row.  I planted all of these from the garlic I grew last year.  You really only have to buy garlic once if you plant enough to collect a few large pieces off of them for the next planting. I have a row garden when square foot gardens are all the rage.  But guess what? My dad brought me all the stuff to make a 3x10 foot square foot garden this year.  I'll tell you about it later. Anyway, back to the GARLIC ... it's awesome.  Just stick a clove in the ground.  Make sure it gets watered well in the fall.  And then here you go.  It sprouts in the spring and then when it starts turning brown in August, pull it up. You can braid it together or cut off the tops and let it dry. The hard neck kind stores really well, almost a year.  And even though powdered dried garlic upsets my tummy, fresh minced garlic does not. 

The mini tiller works its magic

So here you can see the first thing I tackled with the mini tiller.  I think I need to get the rake and fix the edges along with using a shovel to tidy them up a bit.  Bit it took out that grass that had invaded about a food in about 20 minutes.  And no, that black rain spout isn't permanent but it'll do for now.

The peas are in the ground.  And I got out the drip line.  I will not turn on the drip line until mid June probably.  Of course lots of people are praying it stops raining around here.  There has been some flooding because of the clay soil and lack of drainage plus the huge snow pack.  I wish people would pray that we'd be blessed with the right amount of rain instead.  

 Here is the view facing east.  First row- garlic, second and third row - big daddy onions. Fourth row - romaine lettuce, white and purple kohlrabi.  Fifth row - columbia cabbage.

 And here is the view facing west.  Sorry about the mountains being blown out. It really is a great view.  Here is the last row - peas.  I set the trellis 2 feet from the property edge to give myself room between the sunflower weeds that grow in the lot next door and my garden.

Green Beans - finally!

I've really been looking forward to these all year.  On Monday I harvested the beans you see in the first photo.  On Wednesday I harvested the beans in the second photo. WOW! Most of them have been blanched, placed in quart size ziploc freezer bags and placed them in the freezer. The rest will end up being canned.

Monday:

Wednesday:

And my kiddos even helped.  My son even joined in because he saw his sister hard at work and he can't be out done! 

The same day I also harvested onions and the last of the garlic.  Some tips on garlic - the larger the clove, the larger bulb it will grow into.  Keep that in mind.  I had the space so I just planted everything I had - big and little.  

This photo just doesn't do this justice.  This yellow onion is HUGE! The red onion is an average size red onion. Anyway, fresh salsa is on the way ... well, if the tomatoes would ripen!